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Make Germany great again: Merz decided to turn the Bundeswehr into the strongest army in Europe
Friedrich Merz promised to make the Bundeswehr the strongest army in Europe. To do this, the German Chancellor plans to increase the number of military personnel on a voluntary basis. Otherwise, the introduction of universal military service, abolished in 2011, is not excluded. However, the return of conscription is not provided for by the coalition agreement concluded between the CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democrats. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
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"We will make the Bundeswehr the strongest conventional army in Europe, as our partners rightly expect from us, given our size, our capabilities and our geographical location," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz promised on the eve of the NATO summit, which began on June 24 in The Hague.
According to him, Europe made a mistake by not listening to the warnings of the Baltic States "about the threats emanating from Russia."
"There is no turning back. And that's why I repeat here once again: Lithuania's security is also Germany's security," the head of the German government said.
He called the bloc's summit in The Hague "historic without exaggeration," as NATO allies must decide to "invest significantly more in security in the future."
Merz claims that "this is not being done to do a favor to the US president," but because the Euro-Atlantic region fears that "the Russian Federation will continue the war outside Ukraine."
In this regard, Berlin, according to the Chancellor, must take on a special responsibility — "to ensure the protection of allies on the eastern flank of the alliance." In early April, the German authorities commissioned the first unit of the 45th brigade of the Bundeswehr in Lithuania, numbering 150 soldiers.
At the same time, Moscow has repeatedly stated that it does not pose a threat to NATO. According to Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, the North Atlantic Alliance wants to portray Russia as a "fiend of hell", a "monster" in order to "decide to increase spending to 5% of GDP."
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded that Europe "take responsibility for the security of the continent" and increase defense spending to 5% of national GDP. At the same time, two thirds of the alliance's members currently spend about 2% of GDP on military needs.
Alliance Secretary General Mark Rutte proposed a "cunning plan" to increase state spending on general defense needs to 3.5% of GDP, and allocate another 1.5% for the development of infrastructure that can be used for military purposes, including bridges, ports and railways.
In addition, NATO plans to increase military capacity by 30% by purchasing more drones, long-range missiles, as well as developing artillery and air defense systems.
Germany has a special role to play in this: the country plans to attract an additional 80,000 troops. Currently, there are about 182 thousand people in the Bundeswehr.
The return of the draft
In mid-May, during his first government statement to the Bundestag, Merz announced that Germany was striving to create the strongest conventional army in Europe. According to him, strengthening the Bundeswehr is in the first place for the country. This is the first such statement in the country's post-war history.
On March 25, amendments to the Basic Law (a document that establishes the foundations of the German legal and political system) on a significant increase in government borrowing to finance growing defense and infrastructure spending came into force.
If it is not possible to increase the number of military personnel on a voluntary basis, Germany may consider the return of conscription.
Meanwhile, the coalition agreement concluded between the CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democratic Party of Germany does not provide for a return to military service, which existed in the country before 2011. It was then cancelled by the CDU government for financial reasons.
The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany stipulates military service only for men, and various options are currently being discussed, including conscription for women. However, this is only possible if the document is changed — this can be done with the help of two-thirds of the votes of the Bundestag deputies.
This is hardly possible now, given that the Left Party is categorically opposed to the return of universal military service. Also, two-thirds of the votes cannot be collected without the votes of parliamentarians from the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
YouGov conducted a survey, which found that 54% of the country's citizens are in favor of the return of conscription, which includes the possibility of civilian service (that is, service without weapons), 40% of respondents are against.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius traveled to the Scandinavian countries, studying the practice of conscription of women into the country's armed forces along with men. According to the minister, many more issues need to be resolved to implement this, so the process may take several years.
What do the experts think
Artem Sokolov, a senior researcher at the MGIMO Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, noted in an interview with Izvestia that large financial resources are provided for military reform in Germany, which are aimed at modernizing the material and technical base, creating and modernizing military infrastructure, communications, ammunition, and so on.
— The significant financial injections that are already being implemented for the needs of the Bundeswehr and will be implemented until 2029 are designed to change the German army, compensate for the chronic underfunding that was observed in the previous period, and thus, if not make the Bundeswehr the strongest army in the European Union, at least bring the level of the German army to the armed forces of the leading the countries of NATO and the EU," the expert explained.
The German added that the recruitment of personnel is considered to be a weak point of the military reform, since, despite the rather attractive conditions of service, the Bundeswehr has been experiencing an acute shortage of personnel since the abolition of universal military service in 2011.
— This applies to almost all positions in the German army. It is not possible to solve the problem on the basis of a voluntary, contractual formation of the armed forces. Moreover, the "Russian threat" factor, which is usually used by German politicians to promote initiatives in the field of defense policy, does not find a full response in German society, the political scientist believes.
According to him, after February 2022, not only has there been no increase in the number of contracts for service in the Bundeswehr, but the number of prematurely terminated contracts has increased.
— Even a return to the conscription system will not solve the problem of staffing the German army, because there are ample opportunities not to serve legally, for example, to choose an alternative civilian service. The Basic Law stipulates that it is not possible to forcibly conscript a person," the specialist emphasizes.
He believes that in general, it seems that Merz's statement about "the strongest army in the EU," along with other statements "aimed at defensive rhetorical pathos, stylistically copies the logic of the Cold War."
— This is not even a cliche, but rather a model that Merz aspires to as a person who was largely shaped as a politician during the Cold War. He is trying to copy the early Helmut Kohl here, a sample of the first half of the 80s," the analyst explained.
The ex-chancellor also took a sharply confrontational course towards the Soviet Union, and supported all American initiatives aimed at expanding the level of geopolitical confrontation.
—And here Merz is somewhat behind the times, it feels like this man is from a completely different era, speaks in different terms, and it looks a little irrelevant," Sokolov summed up.
Natalia Eremina, a professor at St. Petersburg State University, notes in a conversation with Izvestia that Germany has always had the opportunity to spend less than GDP on defense and hold joint events with the countries of the European Union and engage in arms production together with the United States.
"Now we are faced with a completely new situation, when production is collapsing, and funds from the Defense Fund will be exhausted by 2027," the political scientist explained.
According to her, new plans are emerging, they are related to investing in the defense industry.
"Basically, it's not even about supporting our own industry, but about financing large arms manufacturing concerns that have turned into multinational corporations," the expert believes.
According to her, both Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed that investments would go into defense to create new jobs.
— There are no other ways to direct investments. And in order to force the population to fork out, not to complain about taxes and other things, they began to spread threats about the alleged impending Russian aggression. Now they are very actively promoting plans to transfer troops to the eastern border in case of this expected aggression," the analyst said.
According to Yeremina, they are also changing the number of reservists for this case.
— They are starting to train reservists, they plan to attract new military personnel, Merz is trying to return Germany to the place it previously occupied — a large militarized state. But we in Europe know how the militarization of Germany ends — definitely nothing good for its neighbors," the political scientist concluded.
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